Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Film Fest celebrates ten years (but for you, seven years, wholesale) September 8-18.

Technically, the annual Jewish FilmFest, put on by the Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland, marks a full decade in 2016. With the asterisk that this week-plus of Israeli and international Judaica cinema is somewhat of a successor to the old Cleveland-Israeli Film Festival of about two decades ago, which brought to the area the rarely-screens films from the Tel Aviv movie industry.

After that had lain fallow into the early 2000s, the Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Film Fest began, and broadened that mission to include fiction and nonfiction, shorts and features, live-action and animation, from all over the world.

Screening venues are primarily at the Cedar Lee, but with additional showings at Shaker Square, University Circle, the Parma-Snow Public Library and the Mandel JCC itself.

Besides the imports from Israel, the 2016 milestone has entries from France, Poland, the Czech Republic and even the United States. But, yes, it is from France that we are receiving the definitive documentary on the American screen (and underrated filmmaking innovator) JERRY LEWIS: THE MAN BEHIND THE CLOWN, presumably in English, showing on Sept. 11 at the Cedar Lee.

On the Edge Film Festival goes extreme, October 9 and 10

Event preview by Charles Cassady Jr.

Are you too active and athletic and fond of extreme sports to just sit in a dark place and watch some movie for hours and hours? Here is the perfect solution: sitting in a dark place and watching hours and hours of movies that are about active and athletic people doing extreme sports.

Such is the On the Edge Film Festival, in Cleveland's Ohio City. It hails from the same management that, for a number of exhilarating years, brought the touring Best of the Banff Mountain Film Festival to Playhouse Square.

It's very much cut from the same North Face/Polartec cloth, a two-day mini film fest devoted to outdoor adventure and "mountain culture," presenting the cutting-edge in outdoor/ski/nature/mountaineer filmmaking. These are the trails blazed by the likes of Warren Miller and Bruce Brown, and lately amped up by flying drones, GoPro and digital action-cam technology.

A Priest, a Rabbi and an Arab walk into a bar...or is it the Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Film Fest, October 8-18?

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

A good many more movies than you think hail from the film studios of Tel Aviv (I should copyright the name Matzoh-bollywood before someone else does). But where to see Hebrew film

 fare on the big screen? The Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Film Fest, that's where. 

This annual fall feast of cinematic Judiaca, fiction and nonfiction, shorts and features, utilizes screening venues all over, mostly on the east side of Cuyahoga County, with the bulk of the films shown at the Cedar Lee multiplex in Cleveland Heights, but with additional curtains raised at the Lakewood Public Library, Chagrin Falls, Shaker Square, the Maltz Performing Arts Center, and the Mandel JCC itself. 

Besides the imports from Israel, the 2015 edition has entries from France, Germany, the United States - and even Uruguay, in the case of MISTER KAPLAN, a 2014 comedy about an elderly South American guy fixated on mounting a ramshackle police operation, amateur MUNICH-style, against an old German saloon owner he suspects is an escaped Nazi war criminal. It screens at the Chagrin Cinemas multiplex On October 17 at 9:30 p.m. 

Canton Film Festival kicks off its second year Oct. 2-4

[Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.]

Didn't Andy Warhol say something like in the future everyone will have a film festival? Well, he should have.

Last year Canton, Ohio, not content with being home to the Football Hall of Fame and the R&B Hall of Fame, hosted its first film festival. This weekend the second annual Canton Film Festival brings a fairly amazing gallery of guests and locally connected films to the town.

A major VIP is Brannon Braga, a onetime Canton resident who wound up at the helm of the syndicated smash Star Trek: The Next Generation. Braga went on to produce two Star Trek theatrical features and also written and produced for TV's 24, Flashforward and, recently, the new Cosmos science documentary show. Braga has directed it as well, and an episode of his Cosmos will screen at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4, along with a reception and discussion with Braga.

Run for the Pennsylvania border for The 2013 Eerie Horror Fest Oct. 18-20

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Ever since LeBron left, the most significant thing about Cleveland is, we can all agree...Well, no there's really nothing. LeBron took all our hopes and dreams with him. There is only emptiness and futility left now. I received a schedule of the upcoming Ohio Independent Film Festival slate of entries and it even has a whole documentary devoted to LeBron's "Decision" to flee and the impact upon this beknighted metropolis and
Cleveland's "recovery" from the humiliation. Kind of like the way addicts and alcoholics are in "recovery," I fear, the sort of "recovery" that goes on forever. Like the recession here.

Well, I guess the Ohio Independent Film Festival is the one thing significant about Cleveland now that LeBron's gone, but it's still several weeks away. How to occupy your time in the meanwhile? Maybe consider a Halloween-themed movie festival that allows a nice, non-taxing road trip out of this desperate, LeBron-less town?

It's the Eerie Horror Fest, happening right over the Pennsylvania boarder in Erie, PA. Yes, you have to drive though Melonhead territory around Mentor/Kirtland
and Harlan Ellison territory around Painesville, but Ellison (like LeBron) left the state long ago, won't likely be on the road to terrorize you.

Honest, No Fooling, the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival returns, Oct. 2-6.

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Ever since LeBron left, the only thing significant about Cleveland, we can all agree, is its close proximity to Chagrin Falls, hometown of Tim Conway, National Lampoon eminence Doug Kenny, and "Calvin & Hobbes" cartoonist Bill Watterson. 

And for four years now, Chagrin Falls has also been host to the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, the region's only film festival uniquely devoted to nonfiction features and shorts. It's a must on any local film fans' itinerary.

The CDFF takes place from Wednesday, Oct. 2, through Sunday, Oct. 6, at venues throughout the famously postcard-pretty village of Chagrin Falls on the eastern side of Cuyahoga County. Screening sites range from the venerable old Township Hall on Main Street to the Chagrin Valley Little Theater and the Federated Church.

Independent Pictures announces the call for entries for its 2013 Ohio Independent Film Festival, now in its 20th year of programs!

[Press release from Independent Pictures.]

Independent Pictures, the parent organization of the Ohio Independent Film Festival, announces the call for entries for the 2013 Ohio Independent Film Festival, held November 7 – 10, 2013 in Cleveland and Euclid. Submissions are accepted online via www.withoutabox.com; filmmakers can also send an email to ohiofilms@yahoo.com in order to obtain a downloadable entry form. Fees vary based on length of film and submission deadline (early deadline is July 1; regular deadline is August 1).

Filmmakers from Cleveland, from Ohio and around the world are encouraged to submit their short and feature-length films for possible acceptance into the Ohio Independent Film Festival, one of the leading showcases for independent films in the Cleveland area.

Go green for Valentine's at the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival

[THE WILD AND SCENIC ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL takes place Saturday February 16th at starting at 6:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.]

Reporting by Charles Cassady, Jr. 

It’s the weekend of Valentine’s Day. Where to take your sweetheart for an experience that deepens and defines your releationship?

Okay, guys, first know this about your sweetheart (keep in mind I’ve only dated Cleveland girls; your results may vary geographically):

           --She probably really doesn’t love or fancy you very much. She just thought you might have some good career-related connections. Or maybe she saw you driving your dad’s sporty car as a loaner while your own 1993 Escort was in the shop again for repairs and assumed you had lots of money and/or access to cool narcotics.

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             --She is dazzled by bright, shiny objects and things on screens.

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       --She is, politically correctedly, passionately concerned about the environment, global warming, and the welfare of all living things (except for you).

Then the place for the perfect romantic idyll is University Circle, whose cultural institutions and museum-collections will make memories. Memories that will help you later visualize your sweetheart being axed to pieces by knights in suits from the Art Museum’s Armor Court, or devoured by a T.rex skeleton from the Natural History Museum.

16th Indie Gathering Press Releases Part 2

Here's another helping of press releases about the films showing at the 16th Indie Gathering. The festival takes place from Friday August 17th through Sunday August 19th at the Clarion Inn and Conference Center in Hudson, Ohio. We'll be running more of these in the days to come, but for more information on the festival you can visit their website http://www.theindiegathering.com/

Best of the Banff Mountain Film Festival in Cleveland, April 13-14

[THE BANFF MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL takes place on Friday April 13th and Saturday April 14th at the Ohio Theatre in Playhouse Square.[

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Ever since LeBron James left the only thing significant about Cleveland is that it is one of the stops of the "Best of the Banff Mountain Film Festival." This is an annual spring event that this year takes place at the Ohio Theatre in Playhouse Square on Friday, April 13 and Saturday, April 14.

And it ranks as the least geeky film-festival in northeast Ohio.

That’s because the Banff Mountain Film Festival is the work of REAL MEN. The Banff festival proper originates each November in the Canadian Rockies, as a two-day and four-night expo and trade conference devoted to outdoor adventure and "mountain culture," usually but not always documentaries, submitted by gifted amateurs and total pro athlete-filmmakers of all ages. At Banff, a movie called SALMON FISHING IN YEMEN would be…about extreme salmon fishing in Yemen, not a scripted whimsy about a Scottish fisheries chap in a stagnating marriage hooking up with Emily Blunt and an eccentric Sheikh.